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9 Responses to Open Thread Wednesday!
joanna - March 3, 2010 at 2:10 pm
Taxonomies are on my mind and soon, I hope, on my computer files. I have ten years of assignments and folders that need tagging and organizing. But how? By course? Activity? Technique? Program? Tagging will help me create categories, but I want to have an uberlist that I can refer to so that I don’t create and recreate similar tags (which I very quickly will forget).
Have any of you devised a taxonomy for your academic files? I’d appreciate advice. Thanks.
Billie Hara - March 3, 2010 at 2:29 pm
What a great suggestion, Joanna. I’ve been thinking the same thing about needing to reorganize my delicious bookmarks and all 4000+ images I have stored on Flickr. I look forward to this answer. :-)
OPIEWeb - March 3, 2010 at 2:55 pm
Completely self-serving anecdotal survey:
Last week a professor at East Stroudsburg University here in PA was suspended over comments she made on her personal Facebook page (see here: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/facebook-firings-employees-online-vents-twitter-postings-cost/story?id=9986796).
Does this sort of thing make you less willing to share your views or discuss topics in your field online?
Susan Adams - March 3, 2010 at 3:25 pm
It doesn’t make me less willing, but it is a reminder to be conscious of what I say and write, both in f2f and online spaces. (I probably get in more trouble for having a voice that carries down hallways than for things I post online…) I can’t remember which site’s coverage it was–perhaps Inside Higher Ed–but one commenter suggested that it’s not fair that we should have to monitor what we say away from the job. But then, we have the kind of job that has much less of a clear “away from” space, do we not? Particularly those of us who choose to use online forums for interactions with colleagues and even students.
On a side note, I look forward to sharing this story with students as we consider the implications of our language choices.
Nels - March 3, 2010 at 4:19 pm
I already wrote about my thoughts on this in the comments of a post here last Friday. Considering what she wrote about students and that she wrote it in a place where her students could see it (since it was a student who turned her in), I do not feel a lot of sympathy for her. Maybe there are extenuating circumstances like the racism she says she’s living with there. Maybe others at her school have been allowed to get away with this and she’s being signaled out. I get that there could be extenuating circumstances. But writing about students being killed in a place where those students will/can see that comment isn’t cool to me. So, no, this does not change a single thing I will do online. If I ever write about my students being killed or raped or anything that violent, it’s not me. I’m hacked or I’m inhabited by the black smoke monster from Lost. I have never even said anything like this privately to my partner when I complain about student behaviors.
joanna - March 3, 2010 at 4:23 pm
Thanks, Billie, and let me add that if the categories become identical in all of my online domains, all the better. If platforms can’t cross to each other, then at least I’ll have ONE organizational schema rather than one too many!
JES - March 3, 2010 at 4:33 pm
I’ma humanities grad student who will be on the market next year. I remember the post about MLA and twitter there was a discussion about how something on twitter had hurt a job candidate. Someone asked what job candidates should be judged on when there are hundreds of applications for one slot. I’d like to hear from search committee members about how they do make decisions when there are hundreds of applications for one spot. What makes the difference? I’m confident as is my adviser about beling a strong candidate but I’m worried about what happens when I get to the top twenty and look just like everyone else.
Derrick - March 3, 2010 at 8:01 pm
Has anyone tried one these? (though, it’s for a Mac). There’s also a free tagging utility there.
http://www.ironicsoftware.com/
Nels P. Highberg - March 4, 2010 at 10:08 am
JES, I’m the one who asked that question, and I’ve been on a few search committees. I’ll check with the rest of the PH team, but I might be able to get a post up that at least presents what I’ve done. I can also talk to a friend who was on a committee that had 365 applications for one spot. I remember her/him saying that it felt like flipping a coin once they got to the top thirty. It’s probably the one area of the job search that is talked about the least. You’re smart to be thinking ahead!